A wireless network is generally made up of a number of cells. Each cell can connect mobile phones and other mobile devices to the network via wireless signaling. In some situations, a network operator may temporarily or permanently take a cell out of operation, for example, to repair, replace, upgrade, maintain, or decommission the hardware or software components associated with the cell. A basic cell locking procedure can be used to take the cell out of operation. In the basic cell locking procedure, all the cell resources are immediately released and all of the existing traffic on the cell drops. Unfortunately, dropping the existing traffic causes undesirable service impacts on the users.